47 thoughts on “IDF Censor Tells NY Times It Must Censor Future Reports on Killing of Lt. Hadar Goldin – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
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  1. So which is it?

    “the IDF survivors of the ambush had shot both Goldin and the Palestinian who tried to drag his wounded body away.”

    or

    ” the IDF bombarded Rafah with heavy artillery and from the air in order to both take vengeance for the ambush which killed two senior officers; AND to kill Goldin.”

    There is a huge difference. If the former, then the entire of Fridays bombing of Rafah was based on a lie. Otherwise it was based on bad policy.

    1. @ Sydney: Goldin was wounded but not dead after the ambush & capture. But he WAS killed (or died later of his wounds) during the subsequent IDF bombardment of Rafah. It’s also possible he was killed while the fighters were trying to escape through their tunnel. We don’t know the precise details other than that the IDF did attempt to kill him during the ambush (after capture).

      1. @Richard

        I’m not overly concerned over who killed Lieutenant Goldin.

        The greater question, in my mind, is how can any diplomat or negotiator accept Hamas at it’s word when they can cynically violate a ceasefire in order to kidnap a soldier.

        1. According to other sources, this happened before the cease fire, and IDF has published a time which is later.

        2. “The greater question, in my mind, is how can any diplomat or negotiator accept Hamas at it’s word when they can cynically violate a ceasefire in order to kidnap a soldier”

          1) The ceasefire was due to start at 8am
          2) The IDF insists that this firefight started at 9:30am, yet…..
          3) Hamas had tweeted a message regarding this firefight at 7:30am

          Hellooooooooo. point (3) makes point (2) an impossibility.

        3. The even greater question is what kind of a “ceasefire” allows one party to perform “military operations” in the other party’s territory. Israel had broken the ceasefire before it even began.
          Btw, it seems you didn’t even bother reading the article, or else you wouldn’t be talking of a “kidnapped soldier”, if anything out of courtesy to the author.

        4. How did Hamas violate the ceasefire. the Israelis had to have already violated it for their soldiers to be kidnappable. The Israeli soldiers that were killed and Goldin were on an offensive in gazan territory.

        5. The problem is how can anyone accept Israel’s word when they are capable of massacring so many children and women and bombarding UN schools? Also a little FYI for you, Khaled Meshaal stated in a recent interview with CNN that they told Kerry through Qatar that they WILL defend any anti-tunnel operations inside Gaza strip by IDF. Otherwise it is not really a ceasefire.

        6. Frank loses any semblance of credibility by referring to Goldin as “kidnapped.” As for who violated the ceasefire it was as always Israel. Israel violated the ceasefire by advancing its troops. Palestinian Defense Forces had every right to defend their position. Israel lost all credibility decades ago. It never respected any ceasefire or treaty it signed. Hamas never violated one. It was Israel that violated a months-long ceasefire in 2008 in order to carry out CAST LEAD. It was Israel that violated the ceasefire it signed in November 2012, before the ink was dry, and continued to violate it 300 times more. Hamas continued to respect that truce, despite dozens of Palestinians killed in Gaza by IDF. There are things about Hamas that I dislike, but I don’t consider them to be terrorists. And they have shown themselves to have far greater integrity than Israel has ever had. To Israel, a ceasefire always means we will continue to do whatever we want whenever we want, but you aren’t allowed to respond. Just like this upcoming 7 hour “humanitarian” ceasefire to begin in a few hours. Israel has specifically excluded Rafah, where in the last hours it killed well over a hundred people, in its frenzy to locate or kill its missing militant. Palestinians in Rafah were counting on the humanitarian ceasefire as an opportunity to find missing and dead loved ones under the rubble. Instead IDF will no doubt direct all its efforts to slaughtering even more innocent women and children while Palestinian Resistance is supposed to refrain from defending its people against Israel’s homicide bombers.

    2. “There is a huge difference.”

      No, not really. If you had read Richards previous post you would have seen him quote this from Israel’s Channel 10: “The IDF is bombing every vehicle approaching Abu Yousuf Al-Najjar hospital in Rafah.”

      That makes perfect sense if the IDF had come to the conclusion that he had been wounded during his capture by soldiers invoking the Hannibal doctrine.

      After all, try as they might the only weaponry THEY had was automatic rifles.

      So if the IDF suspected he was wounded-but-not-dead then it makes perfect sense for them to Try One More Time To Hannibal Him, only this time they’d use artillery and missiles rather than simply an infantryman’s rifle.

  2. ‘No legal authority’ to arrest?
    They have authority by international law to uphold the law that existed prior to the occupation (Jordanian ex British emergency regulations) and do as necessary to keep the security of the area. Thus the military courts are legal, the arrests are legal where there is suspicion (only Hamas were arrested not indescriminate arrests). Even shallot releasees were arrested legally as breaking the conditions of their release as signed by all those released.

    1. @ Shmuel: IDF indiscriminate arrests of tens of thousands over yrs in West Bank are entirely without any legal basis. Administrative detention is also patently illegal. Military courts are entirely illegal. But I wouldn’t expect someone who’s served as a military judge during reserve duty to say anything other than what you did!

  3. A soldier isn’t “kidnapped.” He or she is “captured.” But the deliberate reframing of these incidents by our media (thank you for the reminder, George Lakoff) is interesting, if also dismaying.

    1. @Rachael

      A P.O.W. who is treated according to the Geneva Conventions, is a captive.
      A P.O.W. who is denied his rights under the Geneva Conventions, is a kidnap victim, like Cpl. Shalit.

      1. Actually there is not even a single accusation that Hamas mistreated Shalit. Seriously, do you just make up stuff to justify Israel’s inexcusable behavior?

          1. The IDF didn’t treat its prisoner Mustafa Dirani according to the Geneva COnventions when it raped him during interrogation.

            Stop with the hasbara point scoring or you’ll be moderated.

      2. That’s nonsense.
        A captive soldier during conflict IS a P.O.W.
        If he is treated according to the Geneva Conventions, he is a lawfully treated P.O.W.
        If he is denied his rights under the Geneva Conventions, he is an unlawfully treated P.O.W.
        He is never a kidnapee.

      3. “A P.O.W. who is treated according to the Geneva Conventions, is a captive.”

        True, he is a Prisoner of War who is entitled to be treated according to the Articles of Geneva Convention III

        “A P.O.W. who is denied his rights under the Geneva Conventions, is a kidnap victim, like Cpl. Shalit.”

        No, you got it right in the first half of your sentence i.e. a POW who is denied his rights under GCIII is….. a POW who is being denied his rights under GCIII.

        It happens, but it happening doesn’t make that PoW into a “kidnap victim”.
        He remains what he is: a Prisoner of War.

      4. You are probably right that Shalit did not enjoy the benefits of the Geneva Conventions, although it is not clear how he was treated. But I don’t know if bad treatment is enough to make somebody a kidnap victim.
        Prisoners have been mistreated by armies and governments for years, in violation of the Geneva Conventions; does this make all these prisoners kidnap victims, or just unfairly treated captives? If you read the Conventions, it is pretty hard as an American not to be thoroughly ashamed of our blatant violation of even the most basic and common sense guidelines of decency in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and when it comes to many prisoners taken in the post 9/11 era. I think the US was pretty responsible about the rules with the Germans and the Japanese.
        Once more, I can feel for Cpl. Shalit, who was a victim of a battle between two parties bigger than himself. But there are so many Palestinians rotting away in jails for so many years, without being charged, some of them women and children. Some of the ‘crimes’ no worse than throwing a rock. You should read about what Israelis do to Palestinian children in custody in order to cultivate new informants, if you want to talk about the Geneva Conventions.

      5. The Geneva Conventions are supposedly for everybody. The Israeli government doesn’t get to pick and choose, either. And yet, they sure as heck do, don’t they?

        1. Without getting into details. Suppose Shalit treatment violated Geneva Convention. Israel, by arresting and tortured thousands of people along these years without a charge means thousands of violations, in the same sense.

          So, Shalit case is pretty much nothing in comparison. It’s like comparing the trauma of a dog with the killing of a baby. It’s a drop in the ocean, so it’s nothing of concern at all. Rachael, you are just playing the victim game of the zionist, typical of Hasbarist.

          1. You misunderstood me. I’m clumsily making the point that if Israel is going to cite Geneva against Hamas, they need to also uphold it among themselves. Clearly, that are not.

  4. The NY Times international editor issued a statement about this issue:

    “We are aware of a very narrow issue that concerns the censors about the background of the captive solider,” said Kahn. “And our reporters in Israel have not reported on that issue. ”

    That statement seems to indicate that the issue involves something personal about the soldier rather than something about the circumstances surrounding his capture. It seems to me that they would’ve also censored the statements made by Mr. Nisman if the issue was about mentioning the policy directive to prevent hostage taking.

    1. Read the updated post. I know what the biographical fact was and it is a hoax to camouflage the IDF’s real intent, which is to monitor any publication that seeks to explore the Hannibal Directive & the IDF’s killing of Goldin.

  5. Wow, this is the kind of thing the military dictatorship of my country used impose to all media: “After the initial publication of this article, the military’s censor informed The New York Times that further information related to Lieutenant Goldin would have to be submitted for prior review. Journalists for foreign news organizations must agree in writing to the military censorship system to work in Israel.”

  6. Terrorists kidnap. They are not legitimate combatants. They dont capture. So long as you are not are asking NYT to relabel Hamas as legitimate army (and of course they ARE terrorists) their usage is fine.

    1. @ Rob: Which “terrorists” might they be? Israel or Hamas? So if people believe Israel is the terrorist then Israelis are kidnapping Palestinians, right?

      Hamas is of course a Palestinian resistance movement dedicated to defending Palestine. That is certainly a legitimate army.

    2. “Terrorists kidnap. They are not legitimate combatants.”

      Common Article 3 of all the Geneva Conventions says that you are wrong.

      Article 4 of Geneva Convention III (i.e. the Convention that deals with Prisoners of War) explicitly mentions “organized resistance movements” which, clearly, is what Hamas is.

  7. You would have to be brainwashed to agree to join a military that would shoot you after you were captured, or even worse, kill you while you were merely in the process of being captured, which is a wholly vague bright line. What sort of morale building exercise is this directive? Who are the suicide bombers, really?

    1. “You would have to be brainwashed to agree to join a military that”….

      Israelis “agree” to join the IDF, do they?

      Since when, exactly?

  8. Ran HaCohen had this to say:

    “…..Just as perfidious was the original aim of the Operation. The real motivation seems to have been to sabotage the conciliation agreement between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority. It seems “divide and rule” continues to be the motto of Israel’s colonialism, having already divided the Palestinians into so many groups and subgroups with conflicting interests (refugees outside Palestine vs. those inside it; those with Israeli citizenship (inside Israel) vs. those without it (inside the Occupied Territories) vs. the East-Jerusalemites with only partial citizenship; and now, Christian Israelis vs. Muslim Israelis). Israel simply cannot tolerate any unification or reconciliation between the West Bank and Gaza, or any of the various Palestinian sub-groups.

    It was clear that this purely political justification wouldn’t be sufficient from the Israeli public’s viewpoint; the kidnapping, therefore, came in an excellent timing. Then once the murdered settlers were found, and it appeared that tragedy may no longer have legs, the aim was updated to stopping the missiles shot on Israel. This despite several previous operations which had failed to achieve that end (the best way to stop the missiles – what a surprise – has proved to be indirect agreements with Hamas).

    When the army inevitably failed to stop the missiles which continue to be fired even after 24 days of scorching the Strip from the air, sea and land, the “terror tunnels” were introduced as the newest aim. Israelis have been persuaded that the tunnels from Gaza have their mouth in nearby Israeli towns and villages, more specifically near Israeli schools and kindergartens. The fact that these tunnels end miles away from any inhabited place has been blurred by the army, who prefer that the nation remain seduced by this made up nightmare scenario. Also lost in all this is the fact that a new tunnel takes only a few months to dig, so whatever might be achieved by temporary dismemberment of the tunnels will be fleeting.

    All these deceits and manipulations escaped the attention of the Israeli mainstream public, brainwashed as it is by an endless march of military “experts” on the TV screen. I believe the desperate moderators, having exhausted all imaginable veteran officers, would now give a microphone to a veteran sergeant as long as he promises to recite the desired slogans (“We can’t stop now!” etc.).

    So while Israelis sound as bloodthirsty as medieval Crusaders, Israel’s “democracy” looks more and more like one of the former “democratic” Soviet republics, and its media as pluralistic as North Korea’s. So much for the only democracy in the Middle East.”
    – “Yet Another War of Deceit”, Antiwar.com

    http://original.antiwar.com/hacohen/2014/08/01/yet-another-war-of-deceit/

    ***

    And now the war is supposedly winding down.

  9. There seems, at first sight, to be a strange contrast between, on the one hand, the disregard for an individual soldier’s life (the Hannibal protocol) and, on the other, the extraordinary fuss made about the continuing detention of one particular soldier (Shalit). I hadn’t heard before that at the end of every news broadcast it was mentioned how many days he had been in captivity. This apparent contrast seems to be based on the same sentiment: tribal pride and racism. No Jew should ever be subject to an Arab as a captive is. This either has to be prevented by death or the nation should be continuously reminded of a situation that should no longer be endured.

  10. Exclusive to Hadashot HaTzafon:

    Lt. Hadar Goldin was killed on the spot from the blast of a suicide bomber disguised as a civilian, and his body disintegrated into several pieces. Hamas fighters exited a tunnel in a prearranged ambush, siezed the pieces of the corpse, and fled back into the tunnel, which opened into a mosque. From the mosque they traveled by UNRWA ambulance to an unknown location, and made contact with Hamas leadership at the Islamic University building. Musa Abu Marzuk then first announced the capture of the soldier. Unit 557 of the IAF, which was operating a Hermes 900 drone with advanced SIGINT capabilities, picked up the transmission between Hadar Goldin’s captors and Hamas leadership at the Islamic University in Gaza, in which all the details of the the captive’s state, as well as the exact location of the captors, was broadcast. Unit 557 relayed the transmission to the head of AMAN, and to the operations room at the Defense Ministry within minutes. The IAF attacked the location of the captors as well as the Islamic University, the captors as well as the IDF soldier’s corpse were buried under the rubble of the location that was bombed. The IDF found the pieces of Lt Goldin’s corpse in Rafiah, which were then transferred to the Forensic Institute, where the identification was made. Once the identification was clear, he was designated as a fallen IDF soldier with unknown burial site.

    חשיפה בלעדית של חדשות הצפון: סגן הדר גולדין נהרג במקום מפיצוץ של מחבל מתאבד שהיה נראה כמו אזרח, וגופתו של סגן הדר גולדין התפרקה לחתיכות. לוחמי חמאס יצאו ממנהרה במארב מתוכנן, חטפו את חלקי הגופה, ורצו לתוך מנהרה שפתחה יצא בתוך מסגד. מהמסגד הם נעו באמבולנס של אונר”א למיקום לא ידוע, ויצרו קשר עם בכירי חמאס שישבו באוניברסיטה האיסלמית, בעקבות זה מוסא אבו מרזוק יצא בהודעה על החייל החטוף. יחידה מיוחדת 557 של ח”א הטיסה מל”ט מסוג הרמס 900 עם מערכות ביון מתקדמות, וקלטה את התשדיר בין שוביו של הדר גולדין לבכירי חמאס, שישבו באוניברסטה האיסלמית, בו נמסרו כול הפרטים על מצב החטוף, ומיקומם המדויק. בעקבות זאת יחידה 557 העבירה את התשדיר לראש אמ”ן ולבור בקריה תוך דקות, וחיל האוויר תקף את יעד שבו נמצאו החוטפים וגם את האוניברסטה האיסלמית, החוטפים והחלקי גופה של החייל החטוף נקברו בתוך ההריסות של המקום שהופצץ, וצה”ל מצא חלקי גופה של הדר גולדין באזור רפיח, שהועברו למכון לרפואה משפטית וזהו כחלקי גופה של סגן הדר גולדין, כשהזיהוי היה ברור, הוא הוגדר כחלל צה”ל שמקום קבורתו לא נודע.

  11. One of the essential points in this incident is that the Israelis probably knew that that Goldin was dead from the start; if as you suggest, they fired upon him themselves. Hamas immediately denied having a prisoner, which leads us to the assumption that Goldin – if he had been in their hands at all — was dead. The Israelis went ahead and distributed the story, with thundering outrage, to the media and to official contacts. In a very short time they had Obama and UN Secretary Moon dancing to their tune — pretend for the moment that the story had even been true; the president and UN SG are on TV parroting the indignation over the ‘kidnapping.’ And of course the news networks. The Israeli government even used the family of this young man, let them make fools of themselves on TV, as they voiced optimism about a rescue that was never going to happen. Now that the whole story is exposed as much less than originally advertised, will the New York Times, and Obama, and Moon, and Anderson Cooper, all come out and admit that they rushed to judgment, and they got played by Netanyahu and his IDF and PR team? Maybe they should have spent just a few minutes more checking out the story to begin with ….?

  12. I find it hard to believe that Obama was duped. IDF false flag operations are nothing new. Israel always makes unsubstantiated accusations against its foes in order to justify its ongoing ethnocide. It later it retracts them after military operations are in full force. Remember its claims that Hamas kidnapped three Israeli settler teens? Quietly retracted by IDF spokesman last week — after more than 1000 civilians were murdered.

  13. The principal reason that the incident was censored was because he was a relative of Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, which would have been significant if he were alive. It may have even required Yaalon to step aside for the duration of the war.

    The IDF would not torment that officer’s family for the sake of a pretext that it didn’t need.

    Furthermore, kidnapping is the correct term – Gilad Shalit was afforded none of the protection reserved for captured soldiers under the laws of war.

    1. @ jared: You clearly don’t read this blog or Israeli media (Hebrew language). The Israeli press published the familial connection quite early on, well after the IDF publicly annoucned Goldin was dead. Ergo, the family connection was a smokescreen to conceal an ulterior motive.

      Yaalon would not have to step aside because a distant relative was dead or captured. That’s beyond ludicrous. I read Hebrew press every day & never read such idiocy there.

      If you post nonsense rebutted in the same comment thread, showing you haven’t read the thread itself, I will quickly tire of you. Violating the Geneva Convention regarding treatment of a prisoner does not change the definition of how he was taken in the first place. He was captured. He was treated reasonably well & not tortured. If there had been Red Cross visits Israel would’ve killed Shalit, the Red Cross reps & Palestinian captors. Hamas ain’t fools, though you may be.

      Finally, can you explain the torture which Israel inflicts on Palestinian prisoners including the rape of Mustafa Dirani? Do you denounce this behavior as vociferously as you do the violation of Geneva Conventions in the case of Shalit??

  14. At the end of the day, an idealistic, religious nationalist and decent human being is dead, and his family and fiancé mourn him.

    1. @ carole: No, I’m afraid that’s not “the end of the day.” But rather the middle. The end of the day is a good man was killed by his own in order to protect a nation’s leaders from further embarrassment. Which is shameful.

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